I think I might be tempted to use a drop in boil element. What that would allow is a screen insert in the bottom, which I believe you might need. This would allow a large removal of dense hop/break material, which I think would not be so easy to remove out the bottom.
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At Alexander Keith's we follow the recipes first developed by the great brewmaster to the absolute letter.
I haven't. I think the opening is 1.5", but the valve looks narrower. I *think* I could switch to a butterfly valve with less restriction...I don't know much about these valves though, so I could be wrong.
If it's a 1.5" it should be 1.5" opening. That said, stout-tanks and others things do have weird 1.5" flange, 3/4" bore valves so it's worth asking.
Butterfly valves actually have more restriction when open, as the butterfly portion does block some of the opening (but they're alot better for cleaning/sanitizing IMHO). Ball valves will be restriction free when fully opened.
I have a 1" TC with a 1" butterfly bottom drain on my kettles, and have no problem rinsing grain/hops/break through it. I'd imagine a 1.5" drain shouldnt be an issue.
But you won't be rinsing in this case. You'll be dealing with a dense mass of hops and break material that needs to gravity drain. Might be difficult...
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At Alexander Keith's we follow the recipes first developed by the great brewmaster to the absolute letter.
That's a 1.5" outlet on the bottom, looks stepped down into a smaller ball valve and nipple. You could swap the ball valve for a butterfly easy enough, and only use the nipple if you wanted to for transfers etc. You won't have much trouble dumping the crap from a 1.5" ball or butterfly, it's standard issue on pretty large brewery tanks. I've worked with a LOT of 40,000 - 60,000 L tanks around these parts with 1.5" bottom drain butterfly valves. Occasionally if the lower pipe becomes clogged with dry-hop and/or protein matter I'd pressurize the tank to blow it out, generally takes 10 PSI or less to free it up.
I'm talking about boil kettle sludge. By the time I'm done recirculating and cooling, I wouldn't bet that will dump hop bomb level hop/whirlfloc/break material. That stuff goes to cement in my kettle.
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At Alexander Keith's we follow the recipes first developed by the great brewmaster to the absolute letter.
I'm not sure how that would be. I mean, I've always drained everything through my 1/2" ball valve and into my fermenter with my current setup, though it's likely different where this would be draining from underneath the sludge. Maybe the extra 1" in diameter and the ability to pressurize would fix that?
I don't think you'll have a problem with it. Dump the hops and trub 10-15 mins after the boil is done, it won't have time to compact much. You could dump in stages; take the heavy particulate a few minutes after flame-out, let it settle 10 mins and dump again etc. You get the idea. Worst case scenario, apply a little pressure, compacting trub won't be an issue when there's an open 1.5" hole at the bottom. You can always blow a little co2 directly into the bottom outlet to loosen it up too.
Question re jacketed conical vs. jacketed pot. How important is it to be able to harvest yeast from the bottom and to dump the trub/hops. Does it harm the beer to sit on the yeast and spent hops? (I don’t think so). Is it worth the extra expense and the more complicated equipment with extra cleaning and sanitization. My preference is to use a setup like the pot one for boiling and a 4 - 7 day primary ferment, and then keg for keg conditioning. Then the system is ready for the next batch. Fermentation temperature control for ales is only required for the first 4 days or so. Top cropping is an option for yeast harvesting with the simple pot, if yeast harvesting is required, ...simply lift up the lid and scoop with a sanitized spoon.
-Mark
2nd place, Canadian Brewer of the Year, 2015
101 awards won for beers designed and brewed.
Cicerone Program - Certified Beer Server
GuingesRock wrote:Question re jacketed conical vs. jacketed pot. How important is it to be able to harvest yeast from the bottom and to dump the trub/hops. Does it harm the beer to sit on the yeast and spent hops? (I don’t think so). Is it worth the extra expense and the more complicated equipment with extra cleaning and sanitization. My preference is to use a setup like the pot one for boiling and a 4 - 7 day primary ferment, and then keg for keg conditioning. Then the system is ready for the next batch. Fermentation temperature control for ales is only required for the first 4 days or so. Top cropping is an option for yeast harvesting with the simple pot, if yeast harvesting is required, ...simply lift up the lid and scoop with a sanitized spoon.
This is near commercial level equipment with all sanitary fittings and welds. It should be extremely easy to keep sanitized/clean (not more difficult as you keep implying), I know everyone has their preference and you like your way of doing things but there is no comparison IMHO. There's reasons the pro's use conicals after all...
Fermentors (both old wooden ones and new SS) in a famous UK brewery I visited last summer. Not looking that conical shaped. Yeast was top cropped from those fermenters.
I was genuinely interested in a discussion regarding one vs. the other. "There's reasons" isn't much of an answer.
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Last edited by GuingesRock on Thu Mar 06, 2014 8:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
-Mark
2nd place, Canadian Brewer of the Year, 2015
101 awards won for beers designed and brewed.
Cicerone Program - Certified Beer Server
GuingesRock wrote:Fermentors (both old wooden ones and new SS) in a famous UK brewery I visited last summer. Not looking that conical shaped. Yeast was to cropped from those fermenters.
I was genuinely interested in a discussion regarding one vs. the other. "There's reasons" isn't much of an answer.
Nice pictures, surely your not trying to make the point conicals are not the most popular fermenters for commercial breweries based on these pictures....
And too cropping in large scale commercial from what I've read in beer historical books is not an easy process and leads to increased risk of infection.
One other small question. You can wash a 16 gal pot in a sink with a spray hose and let the trub/yeast/hops etc go down the garberator, at least that's what I do. How would you wash the conical with its legs attached? Would you need a hose and a floor drain? Maybe if I had one of those conicals I could still lay it down on the draining board and spray it out .
-Mark
2nd place, Canadian Brewer of the Year, 2015
101 awards won for beers designed and brewed.
Cicerone Program - Certified Beer Server
Jimmy, did you think about how to wash the conical. I thought a gallon or two of cleaner in there and then dump into a bucket might work. Same process for rinsing.
I think both the jacketed conical and the jacketed pot are good ideas. If I was going to get one or the other, I can’t decide which would be better for me personally. I do 7 day ferment as mentioned and if I dry hop it is the last three days of that week and then the beer is pulled off the hops. In Nash’s dry hopping post, he mentions advantages of having the dry hops in for only 3 days and then removing them; so if one were planning to do a ferment for longer than one week in there, with multiple dry hop additions, then it would be an advantage to have the conical with the dump tap to dump the dry hops each time. Also I don’t harvest yeast so I don’t need the dump tap for that, but I know many do.
I’m also wondering …are you making this a 2 vessel system with a separate mash pot?
-Mark
2nd place, Canadian Brewer of the Year, 2015
101 awards won for beers designed and brewed.
Cicerone Program - Certified Beer Server
GuingesRock wrote:Jimmy, did you think about how to wash the conical. I thought a gallon or two of cleaner in there and then dump into a bucket might work. Same process for rinsing.
I think both the jacketed conical and the jacketed pot are good ideas. If I was going to get one or the other, I can’t decide which would be better for me personally. I do 7 day ferment as mentioned and if I dry hop it is the last three days of that week and then the beer is pulled off the hops. In Nash’s dry hopping post, he mentions advantages of having the dry hops in for only 3 days and then removing them; so if one were planning to do a ferment for longer than one week in there, with multiple dry hop additions, then it would be an advantage to have the conical with the dump tap to dump the dry hops each time. Also I don’t harvest yeast so I don’t need the dump tap for that, but I know many do.
I’m also wondering …are you making this a 2 vessel system with a separate mash pot?
I'm not sure yet as to how I'd clean the conical. I'll try the manual method first to see how it works..if I find it to be a bit of work I could likely just install a CIP spray ball like in the video below.
And yes, I still plan on mashing in my cooler that I normally use and will follow a no sparge full volume mash (that's how I currently brew).
